Bill Richardson pay-to-play investigation shut down by Holder

Weak...they're playing a dangerous game with this kind of shit, the more the political class gives extralegal privilege to people, be it themselves or allies or whoever else (I think amnesty would be the biggest example), the social contract between the citizenry and the government starts to fray, and we will see serious instability in the US as a result.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The lunatics have taken over the asylum

So, the Obama administration admits that the budget outlook is even worse than they thought, and then...

"I know there are going to be some who say that this report proves that we can't afford health reform. I think that has it backwards," Orszag told reporters. "The fiscal gap is precisely why we must enact well-designed and fiscally responsible health reform now. . . . Given the long-term nature of that problem, we simply can't afford to wait."

That's right. The country's finances are in worse shape than even Teh Smartest Administration EVAR now admits...

In their traditional summertime budget review, administration officials acknowledged that they relied on overly optimistic assumptions about the economy when they forecast in March that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits of $7.1 trillion over the next 10 years. After factoring in the severity of the recession and the prospect of a more sluggish recovery, the White House concluded that the budget outlook is significantly worse.

Given that, "we simply can't afford to wait" to add another crippling entitlement program to our already bankrupt government...

Orszag acknowledged, however, that health-care reform alone cannot solve the nation's budget problems, and he said deficit reduction will be "a top priority" when the president presents his next budget proposal to Congress in February.

Yeah, let's ram this huge clusterfuck that's going to add trillions to the deficit through and just wait until next year, when Obama promises (pinky swear!) that he'll work on reducing the deficit. Presumably through cutting wasteful spending (i.e. your Grandma's hip replacement) and God only knows whatever other dishonest accounting tricks we're supposed to swallow.

When this "top priority" is revealed as something else that The One has failed at, what do you want to be that the words out of his piehole include "Let me be clear" and "we inherited"?

Posted by: Sean M. at 10:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"Well duh", the scientists who don't get it and research dollars.

"Scientists" 'finding out' what we already know and being surprised by it is one of my pet peeves.

In today's exciting episode, via Instapundit, we find this story about how little people know about their friends.

A growing body of experimental evidence suggests that, on the whole, we know significantly less about our friends, colleagues,(Presidents V) and even spouses than we think we do. This lack of knowledge extends far beyond embarrassing game-show fodder - we’re often completely wrong about their likes and dislikes, their political beliefs, their tastes, their cherished values. ...

They even act as if it's a recent phenomenon
Although such blind spots might at first seem like a comment on the atomization of modern life, the shallowness of human connection in the age of bowling alone,...

They skate around it the whole article. Even as they are slapped in the face with it,they keep writing stuff like
Friends and spouses are people to whom we are supposed to be able to confide anything ... Instead, it appears that there are whole regions of our personalities that they miss entirely, and we do the same with them.

Never once, not once, do they even come close to saying, "That's because people believe what they want to believe, always have, always will. In most cases, it keeps us from killing each other."
Con artists, politicians (but I repeat myself), ad execs and more have pretty much turned taking advantage of this into a science and these fools are all surprised that people work that way. 

I learned more about people by reading 'Stranger in a Strange Land" in the 4th grade than any of the researchers in that article have learned in their whole freaking lives.

Allow me to make fun of one particular fool out of an article full of them. It's gratuitous, but he's especially stupid.

It’s not clear that you would need to know everything about someone in order to have a deep and fulfilling relationship with them,” says Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Well Nick, can I call you Nick?, there's a huge body of evidence that would suggest that knowing too much about someone is a bar to having a deep and fulfilling relationship.
Remember the Gilligan's Island show where they could read minds? Remember how much they hated each other?
That's right, this professor of behavioral science knows less about people than a Gilligan's Island episode.

I'm gonna go even farther and say this guy knows less about behavioral sciences than Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, Washington.

Read the whole article, it's actually pretty funny in how obtuse it is. You could get your BS in Obtusity by reading it.

So why the headline?
I'm not sure if this is a good or bad use of research dollars and research scientists.

On the one hand, they would probably gum up the works of any real research.
On the other hand, the money wasted on studies on whether 'being drunk makes ugly people look good' could be used productively studying something useful and not already known.

Maybe someone should do a study.

Posted by: Veeshir at 02:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Compassionate reasons

Aaaaaand liberal feminists here in America (not to mention our Secretary of State) speak out against this in...three...two...one...

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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ObamaCare in action

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"If it stops moving, subsidize it..."

Social Security's going bankrupt? Well, let's just expand it!

@midlifechick just returned from TownHall meeting with her US Rep. John Carter (R-TX). Representative Carter informed the crowd that talk has been bandied about Congress to appropriate EVERY state's pension plans into the bankrupt Social Security System.

She is absolutely 100% sure that she understood him correctly. If this is allowed to happen, and I am going to stress again that at this point it is just an idea that has been submitted; the US will absolutely, 100% be a banana republic, a la Argentina.

(via @LadyImpactOhio via @MikePFS)

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Call me a cynic...

...but why do I have a sneaky suspicion that this will get around 0.000001% of the attention that the left and the MSM (BIRM) paid to the ginned-up Valerie Plame controversy?

The Justice Department is investigating whether Guantanamo Bay detainees charged with roles in the Sept. 11 attacks were improperly given photos of CIA officers or contractors, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The investigation, headed by the Justice Department's counterespionage chief, John Dion, is trying to determine if military lawyers defending the detainees divulged classified information or compromised covert CIA officers, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

It is a violation of federal law to identify CIA covert personnel, and it is a violation of military commission rules to disclose classified information, even if only to the defendants.

The person who spoke to The Associated Press said the photos at issue were provided by the John Adams Project, a combined effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to assist in the defense of the detainees.

Yeah, I'm sure a bunch of glossy Vanity Fair profiles of the compromised covert CIA agents will be coming out right quick.

Oh, and I should also mention that now would be an entirely appropriate time for Zombie John Adams to rise from the grave and start kicking the asses of the douchelawyers co-opting his name in order to help America-hating terrorists.

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:23 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Up is down, black is white...

...Wal-Mart is the new Whole Foods:

They are even talking about a boycott. And who knows? Maybe some will have to rethink shopping at Wal-Mart. Unions once attacked the retailer's labor and benefits policies, but Wal-Mart has become the nation's largest purveyor of organic products and recently espoused a position on health-care reform that is widely considered progressive.

What's wrong with this picture?

"A lot of people have been paying a premium for the Whole Foods brand for years," said Mark Rosenthal, a playwright living in Massachusetts who founded the Boycott Whole Foods group a few days ago. It has nearly 14,000 members. "A lot of people are sad to look at this corporation and see that it is just like any other, if not worse."

Um, pardon me, but what do you think the goal of a corporation actually is?

Here's a clue, you hippie dumbass: making money. I don't give a shit if the corporation also has goals about "sustainable" or "organic" this or that, they're in business to make *DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUHN* money. You know, so they can continue to open stores that have "sustainable" goals and sell "organic" crap to you and your hippie friends. Who, also, might get jobs in their stores, I might add.

Oh, who am I kidding? It's not like hippies want jobs.

Posted by: Sean M. at 10:24 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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It's official - Man's very existence causes global warming

IMAGINE a small group of farmers tending a rice paddy some 5,000 years ago in eastern Asia or sowing seeds in a freshly cleared forest in Europe a couple of thousand years before that. It is here, a small group of scientists would have you believe, that humanity launched climate change. Long before the Industrial Revolution—indeed, long before a worldwide revolution in intensive farming, the results of which kept humanity alive—people caused unnatural exhalations of greenhouse gases that had an impact on the world’s climate.

source

Truly man is a stain upon the fabric of the universe and we should all just slit our throats now. /snark

Posted by: chad98036 at 12:39 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Logan's Run, Here We Come

Listen to the audio Ace links to here.

The implications of government trying to get people to die younger for the "good of society" are terrifying.

I wonder how long it would be until this:

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 06:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Random thought

I really really hate the "not my President" stuff.  I find it an insult to the very idea of America.  But.  What happens if the *President* doesn't think he's my President?  What the hell am I supposed to do then?

Posted by: alexthechick at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, at least it happened in some other country

Although [sigh] I suppose it's just a matter of time before some moonbat starts a petition to do the same thing somewhere here in the States.

If they haven't already, that is.

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:29 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Stupid hippies

The only upside to the fact that these two idiots are reproducing is that their offspring will likely rebel against them by becoming rabid Rightwing Deathbeasts the likes of which will put the rest of us to shame...

Posted by: Sean M. at 12:10 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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California makes me laugh.

California, that test bed for leftist thought, is going down.

Now, on the one hand, that's funny, on the other hand, we know who will have to bail them out, Tarp III: Let's Make the Rubble Bounce.
First up, we have California's budget woes. They are about $26 billion short. I know, chump change to Obama, but that's a lot of money.

So the GOP decided to try to do something besides increasing taxes. Dem heads exploded as they tried to wrap their minds around that thought.
The GOP introduced a measure to increase off-shore drilling at existing platforms.
Quote from John Fund
Thanks to the environmental lobby, it mustered only three Democratic votes and was defeated 43 to 28 with nine abstentions.

So the Dems can't have their subjects... errrr... constituents knowing they refused to increase revenue in a non-taxful way, so (More from Fund)
A motion to expunge the vote from the public record was made by Democratic floor leader Alberto Torrico and was approved by voice vote. It disappeared from the public record as if it had been erased, in an effort to hide their decision from voters.

They're don't have a " need to know". After all, those damn Tea Party assholes are already causing problems, imagine if they found out about this?
And how did the Dems try to close the budget chasm?

Some $1.2 billion of the money “saved” in the budget deal comes from simply shifting the day state workers get paid by one day into the next fiscal year. Cities and counties will sue to declare the state’s $3.2 billion raid on their property tax revenue unconstitutional, and they might well win in court. And the state could likely see another $6 billion to $8 billion deficit open up as early as October, forcing a new budget Band-Aid.

Creative accounting, that's how.
Enron just called, they're jealous and they're mad at Arthur Anderson for not thinking that up. They might sue.

Okay, so CA is screwed and their politicians are refusing to do anything except raise taxes and do some of the voodoo that they do so poorly. 
In steps the SEIU.
Quote
California's largest state employees' union voted on Saturday to approve a strike authorization measure to protest furloughs of state workers and pressure state officials to ratify its labor contract.

So the CA Dems tried to do something to stop the madness and their biggest supporters, the unions, are telling them to go take a flying ass fuck at a rolling doughnut and threatening a strike.

Funnily enough, I'm rooting for a strike. How hysterical will it be when Californians discover that they can survive without those assholes? It'll be even funnier when they don't have to pay the salaries of 95,000 workers and save a metric crap-load of money. And to make it even funnier, how hysterical (in at least two senses of the word) will it be when Minitru freaks out and calls Californians assholes? Again.

If I didn't think it was going to cost us many $billions, I would be laughing harder. It's just too endy to be as funny as it should be.

I think that bailing out states is coming and it will lead to catastrophe as the money goes to Obama's friends (NY, IL, CA, MA, et al.) and ignores Republican states. I figure, at first most of the GOP states will not want to take the money, but as the $billions keep piling up in Dem states, they'll be forced to try to get in on the game.

Since Chicago machine politics does not include being nice to your enemies, the attempt will fall flat. We'll have Minitru denying anything is wrong and calling GOP types "greedy bastiches who didn't want the money 2 weeks ago" and we'll see Joe Biden calling Tim Pawlenty unpatriotic, Nancy Pelosi calling Jindal a traitor and well, you know the routine. It'll all be "uncoordinated" and yet, the talking points will be widespread.

I really wish I was a pollster, I would love to do a poll on how many Americans want to give California back to Mexico.
Since you can get around 20-28% of Americans to say "yes" to anything on any poll and you could probably add in a lot of La Raza supporters (like, oh, our next Supreme Court Justice),  that would be one funny poll to publicize.

Posted by: Veeshir at 12:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Un-Be-Lieve-A-Bile

And I do mean "bile".
A theme I've noticed with this president is how hostile he is to democracy in general and democracies in particular, whether Honduras, Columbia, Israel or even America.

This one is currently the worst example because of the sheer brazenness he puts into awarding the Medal of Freedom to stalwart enemies of freedom.
Because of teh dichotomy!

Bush gave it to Cuban dissidents and whatnot.

Obama gives it to Teddy Fucking Kennedy. Now, ignoring his socialist, ass-fuck-the-stupid-Americans outlook, take two examples of what he's done. He was instrumental in abandoning the Vietnamese to commie dictatorship and did his best to abandon the Iraqis to Islamic dictatorship.
And he gets a Medal of Freedom.
But wait, there's still more, Teddy is not the least deserving recipient this year.
Let's go to Israel Matzav
Obama also gave one  to Mary Robinson, President of Ireland and former UN Human Rights Commissioner. She was very prominent in all the peace-loving events in Durbin. Where peace is dependent on the destruction of Israel.
She was also a member in good standing of Friends of Arafat
quote
in her capacity as president of Ireland, she also happily provided millions of dollars of support to the PLO, which were used in terror attacks:


He has great despicability does our president.

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